Insect Jumps Powered By Mechanical 'Gears'
The finding, detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Science, reveals a remarkable case of similar evolution in animals and machines, scientists say.
Image credit: Burrows/Sutton
“I think it’s quite cool,” said Malcom Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. “It’s a convergence on a solution to the same problem.”
Burrows and his colleague Gregory Sutton were studying how insects manage to jump so quickly when they turned their attention to a species found in gardens across Europe called Issus coleoptratus, also known as the planthopper.
When the pair studied immature forms, or nymphs, of the insect, they discovered protruding, teeth-like structures on their hind-leg joints.
“We thought, well, that’s pretty weird,” Burrows recalled.
Upon closer examination using a microscope, the “teeth” were revealed to be part of curved gear- or cog-like strips found on each hind leg. And just like a cog, the teeth appeared to intermesh with one other, like on the gears of a bicycle.
Video courtesy of Malcolm Burrows
“We were totally dumbfounded when we saw this,” Burrows said.
The scientists’ astonishment grew when they took high-speed video of live planthoppers and watched as the gear teeth of the insect’s opposing hind legs locked together and rotated in preparation for a jump.
“You could see these gear wheels moving past each other, just like a man-made gear wheel. It was extraordinary,” Burrows said.
Synchronized Jumps
The end result is that both legs are synchronized to within 30 millionths of a second of one another.
Such synchrony would be very difficult to achieve using only the insect’s nervous system, Burrows said. “The nervous system uses neural impulses with durations of one to two milliseconds — much longer than the 30microseconds we observed.”
Baby planthoppers require this level of precision when jumping because even tiny discrepancies between their two legs would impart a sideways twist and spin the insects out of control.
“They’re going incredibly fast,” Burrows said. “In one millisecond, they’re going from zero velocity to about 12 mph.”
Fake Gears and Screws
Burrows says that while other examples of cog-like structures exist in the animal kingdom — such as the shell of the cog wheel tortoise or the back of the wheel bug — they are ornamental rather than functional.
The hind leg segments of some beetles do bear a striking resemblance to screws, he added, but “how it works and whether it works like a screw hasn’t been shown.”
Biologist Sheila Patek of Duke University in Durham, N.C., said she has come across many analogies between biology and man-made products in her own research. “I discovered a sound-producing mechanism in spiny lobsters that works like a violin,” said Patek, who was not involved in the research on the planthoppers. “I’ve also worked on a fungal spore catapult that works like an inkjet printer.”
Hillel Chiel, a professor of biology, neurosciences and biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, who also did not participate in the research, noted that more parallels between biological and man-made structures might exist if humans were better materials engineers.
“The reason that man-made devices aren’t more similar to those found in biological organisms is often due to limitations in the materials available to humanity relative to those that can naturally be used by biological organisms,” he said.
Flexible Systems
Interestingly, Burrows and Sutton only found leg cogs on planthopper nymphs — the legs of adult insects don’t have them. The scientists suspect that the teeth of the gears wear down with time; they noted instances of leg gears with degraded teeth that “slipped” a few notches before catching.
For nymphs, such wear and tear isn’t a huge problem, because they molt — or shed off their worn outer skins for new, larger ones — regularly.
“If some damage occurs to a cog wheel, it can be repaired at the next molt,” Burrows explained.
Molting stops when the insects reach adulthood, however. “If you damage your cogwheel on your first day as an adult, then you’re a very unlucky planthopper,” Burrows said.
Instead of cogs, adult planthoppers use a different mechanism to synchronize their legs during leaps.
This flexibility is a hallmark of biological systems, Chiel noted, and one that engineers of biologically inspired robots might take note of.
Contacts and sources:
Ker Than, ISNS Contributor
Inside Science News Service
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Whistler Blowers, Insiders
Nothing in our universe is as simple as it appears. Nothing. So, man’s logic tends to break down where he continually fails to rise to the occasion of being even a remotely relative observer. (hint: pretty much everywhere)
Magnetics researcher, Howard Johnson, is quoted to have said:
“I don’t know how the electrons got started spinning, and I don’t know how to stop them, do you?”
Perpetual motion is everywhere and mankind lacks even a crude understanding of how ‘relative’ that motion is, much less it’s origin. Take for example, the flagellar motor. Arguably the most efficient electric motor known, it was discovered to be the inboard electric motor inside the bodies of certain bacteria. The flagellar motor is complete with sensors, switches, stator, rotor, bushings, drive shaft, universal joint, propeller….etc.
http://www.pnas.org/content/103/5/1260/F1.large.jpg
Examine the pictures closely….How does one honestly ascribe such an engineering feat as a self replicating electric motor, so small that 8 million of them would fit end to end in the thickness of the root of an average human hair, to blind, dumb, chance? Man is so clumsy in comparison….actually, there is really NO comparison. Which means that if one is of the atheistic stripe, one is left to face the stark “apparent” reality that the very “pinnacle” of evolution, ‘mankind’, is rather infinitely LESS than the sum of his parts!
Many a sciential geek extraordinaire would jump for joy if he could make a two piece macro object with moving part in a common 3d printer! (myself included)
Take the lowly human red blood cell for instance. Do not the ‘hallowed’ halls of higher learning teach that homo erectus is the first to walk upright on two legs? Yet we see that the insides of our trillions of cells is each like a harmonious city, replete with cogs, gears, screws, high tech gadgetry….sky scrapers, rapidly self assembling/dis-assembling highways, timely trash collectors, gears, cogs, levers, ….and BIPEDAL organisms walking upright on those magic highways, hauling giant bags of cargo to and fro.
No….’evolution’….mindless, blinded, nothingness did not assemble such fine Masterwork.
That the brain of mankind is ‘wired’ into space time, and capable of seeing future events innately, has been proven statistically in the lab, and categorically in the observations of many among the world’s populations at large.
Why does the human pineal gland contain photo receptor cells similar to retinal cells, even a rudimentary lens? A ‘third eye’? Why put flouride in water to be ingested, if it’s just for teeth and labelled NOT for ingestion? It is known to ‘calcify’ the pineal gland….our ‘WiFi’ connection to a reality much greater than our own. Who would want to sabotage man’s link to the higher realm?
Taken on the whole, (sad, tiny pun) our ‘reality’ our ‘universe’ owes it’s existence, it’s combined energy, to something much more advanced. Some One….and that some One, is about to ‘bring to ruin, those ruining the earth’.
Ask yourself, which is more important at this, the most critical juncture in human history? Pondering the infinite? or Pondering whether or not we should have a place in it and what is required for ‘perpetuation that truly matters’?
Ponder the following truths: It is written that God made Eve by causing Adam to sleep and then taking a rib while he slept. Many a “high mind” has ridiculed this “primitive myth” over the ages. Yet what is occurring today? Do not surgeons remove up to six ribs at a time from some one that ‘they’ cause to fall asleep? And why do they do this? For bone marrow transplants and genetic research. Why ribs? Because they are the only bones in the human body that grow back every time they are carefully removed! The one that invented us knows a thing or two about cloning, I’d say. Do you, dear reader, find it a bit hypocritical to laugh at the story of our Inventor performing surgery to obtain copious DNA material for the purpose of making Adam a mate, when ‘scientists’ of today are playing like infants at doing the same? Again, our view of reality is rather like a child’s view of the world from inside it’s mother’s womb.
Please consider the following:
It is revealed at Revelation 13:18 in God’s Word :
“Here is WISDOM. Let him that hath UNDERSTANDING count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”
I have capitalized the words, wisdom and understanding, so that the reader may observe that Christ is here revealing a clue to the identity and mark of the ‘beast’. If one looks back to the books of Kings and Chronicles, one finds the man of whom Christ is speaking. What man is recorded in both books to have exacted gold tributes of 666 talents? What man was gifted with wisdom and understanding above every other of his day? What man fell away from worshiping the One True God, following after the false gods of his many wives?
Surely by now, the reader can discern what man! Solomon! The man that took the ‘star of chemosh’ as his own personal seal, afterward to be known as the ‘seal of solomon! Later, to be referred to, (as a cover up) as the “star of david”. The HEXagram has no historical link to David of the Bible. It IS however, linked with the fallen solomon. And what organizations today USE the six pointed star?
The ‘free’masons are founded upon the fallen solomon and have revered him highly throughout their organization….and ‘who’ else shares this symbol, steeped in demonic ritual? One cannot now look at C-span without seeing the six pointed star on the national seal, and a HEXagram between each and every member of congress. Soldiers are now asking why it is that each officer sword of all branches of the military have the HEXagram on the hilt of every blade. The HEXagram is a geometric reference to the number 666. The cwhoreporation, Digimarc, for instance, (designer of driver’s licenses and ID’s for various U.S. states) has an interesting logo…. look at the colored spoked wheels inside the circle. Notice (at the link below) the color key on the outside edge? Using those colors, one may find 3 six spoked ‘stars’ superimposed upon one another. 6-6-6…..and on forms of citizen identification no less!
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/799f8af9fb.jpg
Take a dollar bill from one’s back pocket and see that the HEXagram mark of the beast is emblazoned above the eagle, which is their way of indicating that ‘they’ rule ‘over’ america. But why believe me? See for yourselves:
http://leavethecult.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/satur-six-pointed-star-temple-canada.jpg
Google – six pointed star mark
Google – 666 talents of gold
Google – D.C. Jerusalem masonic shrine
Google – Shriner lucifer
Google – lucifer telescope
Youtube – walmart guard towers. They have made their deal with the devil, so to speak and are considered, “too big to fail”. Their workers already wear the six pointed ‘star’ on the foreheads. (of their hats anyway) Can the reader now see that, after all the smaller retail food outlets have diminished or dried up and blown away, that only the largest retail giant in the land will have food rations? That is why they have the guard towers? And what is their “mark”? The same as the mark of the beast! It’s not hard to see food lines and many minions, having signed their lives away, lining up with their ‘marks’ handy, in order to obtain rations.
Google – Walmart six pointed logo
Google – soldiers ask why six pointed star now on all officer swords
Google – talmud truths
The hour is late, the harvest is great and the workers are few…. See the signs He has promised us…
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_earthchanges31.htm
The story “Huge Media Blackout regarding earth and moon orbital changes” used to be hosted at Beforeitsnews.com but the story was deleted several times. This information is of vital importance to all who wish to make informed decisions regarding the lives of their loved ones and themselves. Many were warned, yet because of the “HUGE MEDIA BLACKOUT” when the great flooding on the missouri river took place in 2011 as a direct result of the markedly increased solar radiation now hitting the northern latitudes in spring and summer months, not many took heed to the warnings. And who knew beforehand??? I attended the army core of engineers meeting after the disaster and addressed the Truth. The cowards sat silent and guilty, and there is no way they couldn’t have known well before hand as I and many others knew and tried to warn others. Study and see that Luke 21:25-28 is in fulfillment at this time. And see that when God says that the heavenly bodies will shake, and there will be signs in sun, moon and stars, while the nations will be in anguish over the great agitation of the oceans…..He Means It. Isaiah 24:20, He means it. Revelation 16:8, He means it!
http://science.time.com/2013/03/08/recent-heat-spike-unlike-anything-in-11000-years/
Christ also means it as He reassures us, “When you see the beginning of these things, STAND UP and LIFT UP your heads, for your redemption draws near”. TOO many are instead doing just the opposite, sitting down and hanging their heads! IF ONE IS AFRAID of what is coming upon the world, it is only because, deep down, you believe YOU HAVE IT COMING to you!
DO YOU? Kneel and repent of sin, live STRONG in HIS WORD, His SON, Jesus Christ, and be forgiven, and you will instead find GREAT REASON to stand and raise your heads, even your voices, to God and to your fellow man.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fED-Ky4VEMc
He forgave Kirk Martin, He can forgive you too….Try Him. Soon.
For those who truly seek to know God’s ways, If He exists, where is his signature on Creation….I tell you the time is short, the harvest is great, and the workers are few. See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnSxRYx82Gk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaN2acVMGC8
http://arkdiscovery.com/noah's_ark.htm
http://arkdiscovery.com/sodom_&_gomorrah.htm
God’s Word told the end from the beginning, and SO MANY are missing out on account of ignorance, prejudice, intellectual cowardice, etc…!
Don’t be among them.
Blessings friends, in Jesus Christ!
And remember, the hour is late, and It is HIGH TIME to STAND UP and LIFT UP your heads, (and your voices too!) for your redemption draws near!